You Will Make Big Mistakes. Apologize and Learn From Them.

In the “Being Real About What You Can (and Cannot) Expect to Accomplish as a Teacher,” episode of our podcast, Answers May Vary, we talk about the importance of being realistic about what you can and cannot expect to do as a teacher. In a profession where demands are ever-increasing and burnout lurks right around the corner, sorting out the reasonable expectations from the impossible ones is essential for our mental health and career longevity.

If you’re like us, you’re mistake-averse. Big mistakes. Small mistakes. You don’t want to make them. Our desire to be “free from making “mistake-free” only increased in our time in the classroom. When we began teaching, what happened in your classroom stayed in your classroom, until, at least, the passing period. A few students had cell phones, but not many, and there was no such thing as a cell phone with the capability to record audio or video.

Now, what happens in your classroom is often broadcast to the student body and the world at large, as it happens. This was no more evident than when Kate broke up a fight between two girls in the hallway outside her room: by the time she made it back to class, her phone was ringing as other teachers who had already seen the video called to check in. There are positives and negatives to the globalization, for lack of a better word, of the classroom; we may, at some point, debate them in a blog post.

For now, though, let’s get back to that idea of being mistake-averse. We like our work to be perfect on the first try, and we strive to do the right thing in our personal and professional relationships. As English teachers, we’re particularly aware of the power of words and try to consider how our words will be perceived by others. And yet, we are human, and try as we might, avoiding mistakes is not a realistic expectation we can have for ourselves.

One of Our Big Mistakes

One big mistake that proved to be a particularly powerful learning experience for us happened during distance learning in May 2021. Having reflected on the events of May and June 2020 and the subsequent discussions that resulted from them, we committed to making a better effort to demonstrate allyship through our decisions in the classroom, especially because our student population was well over 90% BIPOC.

We ended the school year by having our sophomores read Nic Stone’s Dear Martin. Not only did we believe it would be an engaging text for students to read at the end of a challenging school year, we also wanted to be intentional in bringing diverse voices and experiences into our curriculum.

One writing prompt in an assignment asked why the protagonist, Justyce, who is Black, becomes angry with another character, Blake, who is white. While there were several reasons Justyce became upset, one of them was Blake “tossin’ the n-word around like [he] own[s] it” (91). How to navigate the use of the n-word in texts has long been an issue for English teachers.

As is common practice, we taught our students that the word could be read aloud when quoting directly from the text because authors choose their words intentionally, but it should never be used in anything but a direct quotation. So, as we walked through the scene between Justyce and Blake in our step-by-step discussion screencast, we read the scene as written, which included one instance of the n-word.

Several students quickly reached out to tell us they didn’t think it was appropriate for us, as white women, to read a racial slur aloud. Initially, we planned to explain the “common practice” policy, but as we heard from more students throughout the day, we became concerned.

We thought we had done the right thing, we were trying to get students to think about important race issues, and the entire screencast was intended to point out that the white character was wrong to use the n-word. We had tried to be so thoughtful and intentional about our choice of the book and how we set up the question, and yet we had really messed up.

We spent time that weekend thinking, researching, and discussing. We found articles about the pain students of color felt hearing the n-word uttered by white teachers reading a text aloud. We discovered many colleges now have policies about white faculty not reading the n-word aloud. It was humbling and saddening to realize that by not considering the perspectives of people of color, we had potentially harmed students in our own classes.

We decided not defer to “tradition” or “common practices,” regardless of whether or not they were, or are, widely considered acceptable. Having explored, researched, and reflected, we now knew better; and, as we tell our students: know better, do better. There is a difference between doing something wrong because we lack knowledge and doing something wrong knowing full well it is damaging others. In trying to make our curriculum more inclusive, we had hurt students. We now had a fuller understanding and needed to do better.

Big Mistakes Can Lead to Big Learning

To ensure all students heard the same message, especially because it was being shared with every sophomore student in a standard English class at our school, we recorded a screencast, apologizing to students, not only for reading the word aloud, but also for not having done the research to see how educational norms were changing or needed to change. We reiterated our belief that white people should not ever utter the n-word, and shared our new understanding that we should not say it under any circumstances. We also acknowledged the hurt we caused and concluded with a promise to change our practice as teachers.

It was by far the most-watched screencast we recorded during our entire 12 months of distance learning. At the time, we felt ashamed, but it wasn’t long before we also felt a lot of other, more positive feelings, too. We were proud of the students who spoke up for others. We were grateful we had the opportunity to learn and change so we would stop making students in future classes feel hurt or uncomfortable. We started to think more critically about all the texts we taught, no matter how canonical.

Often, we end our blog posts with an invitation to share your experiences with your colleagues in person or online and tag or DM us when you do. That seems inappropriate here. Consider, instead, taking some time to reflect on a mistake you’ve made, big or small, that continues to come to mind whenever someone brings up teacher mistakes. It could be something you’ve struggled to see the opportunity for growth in or something you keep trying to forget. Sit with it. See if there’s some way you can reframe it. We promise, it makes living with those mistakes so much easier. If you need someone to share with, we are, of course, always here.

As much as we regretted that the situation took place, we also came to value the opportunity it gave us to learn. Not only did we learn how to better care for our students, but we were reminded that we will make mistakes and that, instead of becoming defensive or leaning on tradition, we can apologize and do better.

As much as we would prefer to avoid mistakes, we know that simply is not possible. What is possible is to learn how to handle them in ways that make us and our students better. We had the opportunity to show our students, colleagues, and families that even with the most seemingly careful planning, things can go wrong, but what we hope and believe we showed as well is that there are endless opportunities to learn, grow, and benefit from negative situations.

While it would have been preferable to have never made this big mistake in the first place, and we take that all the way back to the first time we read the n-word aloud or were insensitive to the feelings and experiences of our students, it was something we were so grateful was brought to our attention. Those students who spoke up were demonstrating allyship for their peers, and they made us mindful of the harm we were doing in what we believed to be an example of our allyship as well.